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Dr. Robert Haley of Dallas speaks at a news conference outside a hearing on an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to strengthen the national standard on ozone to protect public health, at Arlington, Texas, on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. Haley spoke in favor of the tougher standard. (Randy Lee Loftis/The Dallas Morning News)

Update, 3:12 p.m.: Dr. Robert Haley, an internist and epidemiologist, has attacked the contention of industries and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that a tougher ozone standard wouldn’t help public health.

Haley said a new computer model study found that a reduction in ozone of 10 parts per billion in 10 North Texas counties, if it had been achieved in 2008, would have resulted in 320 fewer hospitalizations, $10 million less in hospitalization costs, 77 fewer premature deaths and $617 million less economic loss tied those deaths.

“As physicians who care for those patients and see the asthma attacks, respiratory failure, hospitalizations and premature deaths, we believe that the citizens of these 10 counties are paying a high price for ozone pollution that could potentially be avoided,” Haley said.

A team of epidemiologists and experts in geographical information systems did the study, he said.

Haley said the Dallas County Medical Society and the Texas Medical Association “strongly endorse” dropping the ozone standard from its current 75 ppb down to 60 ppb.

But David Brymer, the TCEQ’s air quality director, told EPA officials that the state agency found the health evidence lacking. The existing standard already protects public health and a tighter standard would not prevent breathing problems or other ills, he said.

“We all share the common goal” of clean air, Brymer said.

Update, 12:44 p.m.:The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s clean-air agency, is a frequent topic at the hearing. Industries are citing the TCEQ’s assertion that a tougher national standard on ozone would yield no health benefits and is scientifically unsound. And it would kill jobs, the industries add.

Austin lawyer Christina Wisdom, speaking for the Texas Association of Manufacturers, told EPA officials that a stricter standard would not be in the nation’s best interest and would “decimate” Texas jobs just to make a “feel-good” change.

Texas Chemical Council President Hector Rivero, whose group represents chemical manufacturers, reached the same conclusion as the TCEQ, which contends that science doesn’t support a tighter standard. He also repeated a frequent assertion of opponents of a tighter standard — that changing the standard before all violator cities have met the current standard is “moving the goal line.”

But the TCEQ is also a target at the hearing. Environmentalists said progress against ozone in Texas has come only because federal rules required it, and that only a stronger federal standard can force more improvements.

“I have no doubt that it would be much worse” without federal pressure, said Christine Guldi of Dallas.

Susybelle Gosslee of the League of Women Voters of Dallas told the EPA that Texas hasn’t made an honest attempt to clean the air. Zac Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment said the TCEQ’s disbelief in ozonee’s health harm had led the state agency to adopt a goal of “close enough.”

And Jim Schermbeck, of the North Texas clean-air group Downwinders at Risk, said the public was relying on the EPA instead of state officials. “Only strong federal action can salvage the situation and give Texans safe, legal air to breathe,” he said.

TCEQ Air Quality Director David Brymer is registered to speak later today.

Update, 10:30 a.m.: A few dozen people are in the Arlington City Council chamber for the EPA’s ozone hearing. In numbers alone, the speakers so far are strongly in favor of a tougher federal ozone standard, and most want the new target at the lowest level under consideration, 60 parts per billion.

Melanie Oldham, a physical therapist, told EPA officials she came to the hearing from Freeport, Texas. “That’s Freeport with an F,” she said, referring to the grade the American Lung Association gave the air quality in the heavily industrial Southeast Texas city.

Frank O’Donnell, president of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Clean Air Watch, asked where someone with a breathing problem would go for diagnosis and treatment — “to a doctor or to an oil-company lobbyist?”

But Austin lawyer Jacob Arechiga, representing the coal and electric companies in the Gulf Coast Lignite Coalition, said a new ozone crackdown would endanger Texas’ coal-burning power plants. “These resources must be protected,” he said.

EPA spokeswoman Alison Davis said 110 people registered in advance to speak. The hearing goes until 7:30 p.m., giving pre-registered and walk-in speakers a chance to be heard.

Original post: The Environmental Protection Agency plans to toughen its national health standard on ozone, the air pollutant that plagues Dallas-Fort Worth. A public hearing all day Thursday at Arlington City Hall will showcase arguments for and against the idea.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has proposed to reduce the standard – in essence, a limit or target – from the current 75 parts per billion to somewhere in the range of 65-70 ppb. She also has asked for comments on strengthening the standard further, down to 60 ppb.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

Dallas-Fort Worth’s three-year average for 2012-2014 was 81 ppb. That was an improvement over the 2011-2013 average of 87 ppb, but still far higher than any standard McCarthy is expected to finalize by Oct. 1.

Ozone forms in the lower atmosphere when chemicals, mostly emissions from vehicles and industries, react with summer sunlight. Over decades, health researchers have linked the pollutant to lung and breathing problems, asthma attacks and new asthma cases, premature death and other ills.

Health and environmental groups say that despite solid science, politics shortchanged needed reductions in ozone in 2008 and then delayed them unnecessarily in 2011.

Independent science advisers to the EPA, mostly university researchers, last year recommended putting the standard somewhere between 60-70 ppb. But the Ozone Review Panel of the EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee said medical research showed that the standard needs to be less than 70 to protect the public with an adequate margin of safety.

That’s an explicit requirement of the Clean Air Act.
Industries that might have to reduce emissions under a new standard say the scientific case for a tighter limit is unproven. Texas’ clean-air regulatory agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, agrees.

Arlington and Sacramento, Calif., are hosting the only hearings on the proposal that the EPA is holding outside of Washington, D.C. The agency will also take written comments through March 17.

The hearing in Arlington runs from 9 a.m.-7:30 p.m. I’ll post updates during the day with summaries of speakers’ comments and a running tally of those for and against the tighter standard.

The new ozone standard, or target, that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy proposed Wednesday would put Dallas-Fort Worth further out of compliance.

If McCarthy’s plan survives what will be a tough public-comment period, lawsuits from industries and states — Texas could be one of them — and attempts to block it by congressional Republicans, the new ozone standard would be somewhere between 65-70 parts per billion. But McCarthy also invited comments on taking it lower, to 60 ppb.

The current standard, 75 ppb, has been an elusive goal for urban North Texas. Ozone levels have dropped over the years as a result of controls on vehicles and fuels as well as industrial emissions. But serious progress has slowed or stalled in recent years.

The ozone standard itself doesn’t require any action. It’s supposed to be a science-based statement of how much ozone people can breathe in without causing health problems, especially in the most vulnerable populations.

The steps to achieve the standard, such as tighter emissions limits, come later. Vehicles and fuels are generally federal responsibilities, while other measures are crafted by states to match local conditions.

Despite progress, new challenges emerge constantly, such as emissions from thousands of gas wells and associated equipment in North Texas’ Barnett Shale gas field in the past 10 years.

Predictions from opponents and supporters were out long before the proposal emerged. Industries are already saying the air cleanup that McCarthy’s plan would require would block economic growth.

Environmental and health groups are already saying it would protect public health against air pollution.

Here’s what McCarthy said in a statement Wednesday morning:

“Bringing ozone pollution standards in line with the latest science will clean up our air, improve access to crucial air quality information, and protect those most at-risk. It empowers the American people with updated air quality information to protect our loved ones – because whether we work or play outdoors – we deserve to know the air we breathe is safe.

“Fulfilling the promise of the Clean Air Act has always been EPA’s responsibility. Our health protections have endured because they’re engineered to evolve, so that’s why we’re using the latest science to update air quality standards – to fulfill the law’s promise, and defend each and every person’s right to clean air.”

Two days with different visibility at Big Bend National Park: on the left, a clear day with visibility at 137 miles; on the right, a hazy, polluted day with visibility at 34 miles. (National Park Service via AP/File)

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday rejected parts of a key Texas clean-air plan, setting up a conflict with deep implications both for the state’s electricity mix and air quality across much of the country.

The plants are mostly upwind of urban North Texas, meaning their emissions often drift to the metropolitan area and further north to Oklahoma. They include Luminant’s Big Brown, Monticello and Martin Lake plants.

Luminant spokesman Brad Watson said the company was reviewing and analyzing how the EPA’s 267-page proposal would affect its plants.

Luminant's Big Brown coal plant south of Dallas (DMN/File)

Coal plants already face economic and environmental pressures from cheap natural gas and rules on emissions of mercury, carbon dioxide and other pollution. In addition, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy must propose revisions to the nation’s standard on urban ozone by Dec. 1. Coal plants are a major source of ozone-causing emissions.

The federal Clean Air Act requires states to submit plans for limiting the types of pollution, mostly from power plants, that cause hazy skies in Class One natural areas such as national parks. The same emissions also can affect human health.

Texas’ regional haze plan does not do enough to curb pollution to meet minimum legal requirements, the EPA said. By law, the federal agency must act on its own authority to regulate pollution sources when a state has failed to do so, the EPA said.

The EPA also found that Texas had not done enough to limit the effect of its pollution on downwind states, Oklahoma in particular.

The EPA is proposing a federal plan in place of the disapproved parts of Texas’ plan. Typically, federal plans stay in effect only until federal and state officials resolve differences and a state plan can take its place.

The EPA will take public comments on its proposals for 60 days. A final decision is expected next year.

Critics of the state’s plan, which was prepared by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, noted one detail: the time it would take to achieve clear skies over Texas’ two big national parks, Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains.

“Waiting more than a century until 2155 as TCEQ proposed to do to return clear skies, is simply unacceptable,” Cyrus Reed, acting director of the Sierra Club’s Texas chapter, said in a statement.

“We applaud the EPA for protecting our heritage and state treasures. Now generations of Texans and people from around the world can continue to experience Big Bend’s incredible sights, the spectacular peaks at Guadalupe Mountains, and the wildlife refuges in nearby states without pollution from coal plants. We must protect these national treasures.”

The TCEQ said Monday that it believes that its regional haze plan meets all legal requirements. In a statement, the state agency said the EPA requirements would cost “more than $2 billion, for a negligible increase in visibility in Class One areas, such as national parks and wildlife areas.

“These costs would invariably be passed on to consumers, either directly or indirectly, and could have consequential impacts on the state’s power grid.”

The EPA’s ruling came two days before a Wednesday deadline for the agency to approve or reject Texas’ plan. At the same time, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has sued the EPA frequently over clean-air rules, take office as governor in January.

Earth and its atmosphere, seen from the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994

Texas’ environmental commissioners gave a quick no on Wednesday to a Houston industry lawyer’s idea that Texas should refuse to put new limits on Texas businesses if foreign emissions worsen global warming and future ozone in Dallas-Fort Worth and greater Houston.

But the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s chairman used the opportunity to take a swipe at the science of human-induced climate change.

TCEQ

Bryan W. Shaw

“We could spend the rest of the day speaking about the lack of links between greenhouse gases and the climate,” chairman Bryan W. Shaw said. He then diverged from that potential rabbit trail and voted with his two colleagues to deny lawyer Jed Anderson’s petition for rulemaking.

“He might have a hard time finding a real climate scientist who would spend more than five minutes arguing with him about whether increasing greenhouse gases are causing climate change,” said Gerald R. North, distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography at Texas A&M.

Texas A&M

Gerald R. North

It wasn’t the first time that Shaw has said he doubts that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the climate. Shaw is an appointee of Gov. Rick Perry, who also has disputed climate science.

Shaw has a Ph.D. in agricultural engineering and has a research and policy background in air pollution, having served on numerous federal and state panels. He is on leave from his associate professor post in Texas A&M’s Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department while he chairs the TCEQ.

North has a Ph.D. in physics and works in Texas A&M’s Atmospheric Sciences Department. A 30-year climate scientist, North specializes in simplified climate models, statistical analysis and related topics. He chaired a panel that last year updated the climate change position statement of the American Geophysical Union, a major professional and science organization with more than 62,000 members in 114 countries.

The statement, headlined “Human‐Induced Climate Change Requires Urgent Action,” declares that “humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years.”

Dallas smog, seen here on a bad day, is a health risk, but whose job is it to clean it up?

Texas’ top pollution regulators will hear an argument tomorrow that almost certainly will fail. But it might kick off some discussion on global warming, public health and North Texas smog.

Jed Anderson is a Houston lawyer whose clients include companies that emit pollution. He will tell the state that harmful emissions from elsewhere worsen Texas’ air quality, so industries in Texas shouldn’t have to make extra efforts to compensate for them.

Anderson will ask the three commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, meeting in Austin, to use a loophole in federal law to avoid new restrictions on Texas industries if global warming boosts local air pollution.

The agency’s executive director says the commissioners should tell Anderson no, calling his analysis “superficial” and scientifically weak. A recommendation for denial usually dooms such requests.

Anderson’s case in point is the human contribution to global warming from power plants, refineries, vehicles and a wide range of other sources. Texas has an outsized share of U.S. emissions, due to its size and heavy industrial base.

But on a global scale, Anderson argues, Texas pollution is an insignificant blip (a statement that by itself would kick off all sorts of fights).

At that point his case gets more complicated. Since lung-damaging ozone forms in hot weather, some studies suggest that higher average temperatures from global warming could boost ozone levels in urban areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

More smog means tighter controls on the local sources of ozone-forming emissions. But if greenhouse-gas emissions in China or India are worsening ozone in Dallas or Houston, Anderson asks, why should local companies bear the extra burden?

“I just don’t think the best way for addressing foreign pollution is to wait until it blows over here and then require Texan citizens to offset this foreign pollution, in addition to reducing their own pollution impacts, by installing additional controls on Texas citizens and businesses,” Anderson told The Dallas Morning News in an email.

“I believe that if the state stopped accepting responsibility for pollution they can’t control (e.g. foreign pollution), [then] the federal government, who has the constitutional authority to control it, would be put more in a position to have to do something about it.”

Anderson wants the TCEQ to invoke a seldom-used provision of the federal Clean Air Act that gives urban areas some leeway if another country’s pollution blows in and worsens local air quality.

The classic case is El Paso, where emissions from Juárez, Mexico are a big local factor. The loophole isn’t typically used to blame countries half a world away.

The Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t commented on Anderson’s idea, but in a report last month it said scientific understanding of how global emissions affect local conditions is too uncertain at this point to rely on for local pollution decisions.

Foreign emissions are important to U.S. air quality, the EPA said, but aren’t expected to be a key factor for most cities.

TCEQ Executive Director Richard A. Hyde, in his recommendation for denial of Anderson’s request, called Anderson’s analysis of scientific papers “superficial” and said he had cited research “uncritically.” Hyde also agreed with the EPA that the link between global emissions and local smog is too tenuous at the moment.

Public-health advocates say in talking about local ozone it’s vital to remember the real purpose of local rules: to protect local people. A Dallas child’s asthma attack, they note, is dangerous no matter where the airborne gunk comes from.

Many researchers say there are obvious links between global warming and human health, from the spread of tropical disease to heat stress. The potential impact of a disrupted climate on human health was the main factor that led the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Texas, some other states, industries and the Obama administration’s congressional critics blasted that decision as illegal, but the Supreme Court has upheld it twice.

Anderson’s plan also could stir complaints that it’s just a gift to Texas polluters. It’s true that no one power plant or refinery is responsible for global warming. Neither is any one car the cause of North Texas smog, nor is one litterer the source of trash across Texas.

But the law still applies to each.

Anderson said it’s just a matter of who should pay for solving the problem.

“The issue, I think, is who is in the best to most cost-effectively address foreign pollution,” he said. “I believe it is the federal government and not the states.”

A federal judge in Dallas has sentenced a former Fort Worth resident to 28 months in prison and ordered him to pay more than $350,000 in restitution for fraud involving emissions certificates on imported vehicles.

A summer ritual that nobody celebrates has returned to the Texas coast: the dead zone.

This year’s area of oxygen-deprived Gulf of Mexico water off Louisiana and Texas is about average size, government and university scientists said Monday: about 5,052 square miles. That’s about the size of Connecticut.

A task force comprising the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and others keep tabs on the dead zone.

The water lacks oxygen, which marine creatures need, just like their landlocked cousins. The Mississippi and other rivers carry big loads of nutrients such as fertilzer from upstream farms and cities. The nutrients fuel algae growth. When the algae die and sink, their decomposition uses up the oxygen.

The result is big swaths of water without much marine life. Mobile animals go somewhere else to breathe.

It’s one of those environmental problems that scientists understand fairly thoroughly but nobody’s managed to solve.

The budget for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is growing by $78 million in fiscal year 2015, mostly due to costs of financing massive terminal upgrades and other construction.

CEO Sean Donohue told the aiport’s board on Thursday that 80 percent of the budget hike is for debt service on the ongoing improvements. The board approved the budget, which totals $735 million.

The budget includes a $2 a day increase in parking at terminal garages.

Board members also approved a new incentive plan for Donohue, who joined the airport last year. If he meets a set of prescribed goals, Donohue will be eligible for a bonus of up to 30 percent of his $440,000 a year base pay, up from 20 percent in his current agreement.

With international traffic expanding at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the airport’s board is offering its chief executive officer up to a 30 percent bonus if he can boost that growth and meet other goals.

Sean Donohue took over as CEO last October at a base annual salary of $440,000. If he received the full 30 percent bonus, his pay for fiscal year 2014 would rise to $572,000.

The board’s executive compensation committee approved the incentive package on Tuesday. The full board votes Thursday.

“It’s certainly not a guarantee,” but the airport would benefit if Donohue met all the goals and received the entire bonus, said committee chair Regina Montoya of Dallas.

Goals include growing traffic and revenues, cutting airlines’ costs at the airport and making high marks in customer satisfaction, operations and employee engagement.

A consulting firm for the airport recommended an increase in Donohue’s maximum bonus, which previously was set at 20 percent of his base pay.

In today’s story about the Environmental Protection Agency’s propensity not to act on certain requirements until a judge orders it, former EPA Regional Administrator Richard Greene observes that lawsuits are just a big part of the way things are:

Lawsuits against the EPA are an integral part of its history. It’s really not surprising that this has happened.

Greene speaks from two viewpoints: as a onetime EPA insider and as a current adjunct professor teaching environmental policy at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Comments from another former regional administrator, Al Armendariz, came in too late to be included in the story. But Armendariz’s perspective is significant because he also has dual roles: as a former EPA regional chief and as a current campaigner for the Sierra Club, which sued the EPA last week over its failure to meet some deadlines for action on Dallas-Fort Worth’s smog.

Here are some excerpts from Armendariz’s remarks.

On why the EPA seems to take so long to make decisions:

In general, it was my experience that deadlines are missed because of lack of resources. There are simply too many things to do and not enough staff (technical and lawyers) to get it all done. I think the environmental community could probably sue on 10 times more missed deadlines than they actually do. It’s best to be strategic to try and get the agency to commit to things that will deliver the most bang for the buck.

In this case, DFW has 8 million people and lots of young kids, a stubborn ozone problem that goes back to the 1960′s, and there are large point sources like cement kilns, coal plants, and oil/gas stuff that could do more to reduce pollution.

On whether the EPA’s delays in meeting its clean-air deadlines in urban North Texas have a real public-health impact:

Absolutely. Back in the 1970′s, the Clean Air Act envisioned two programs for air quality in the country. The dirty areas were going to stop getting more dirty and eventually get clean, and the clean areas were not going to be allowed to get dirty in the first place.

As part of that philosophy, there are special considerations for the dirty (i.e. nonattainment) areas. Under New Source Review [permits for new industrial pollution sources], there are gradually tightening requirements for Title V operating permits and for NSR permits for new construction or major modifications depending on the level of severity of the pollution.

So if the EPA acts to “bump up” Dallas-Fort Worth from a “serious” violator of a 1997 ozone standard to “severe,” more pollution sources fall under mandatory restrictions. And in the cases of those newly captured sources, public participation in the process increases.